


A Chance

by soubriquet



Series: What I Gave [4]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Coma, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/soubriquet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's still some life in there, regardless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Chance

There's something about a coma that sets you back twelve, twenty years.

It can be many things. If it's time, thats all you've got. There's only seconds of moments, beat out every instance by one of those digital clocks matching the heartbeat. There's no 'time' outside of that. You could be in there two minutes, you could be there two hours, no one else cares, no one else minds. Your only companions are the doctors and the nurse come to check on their vital signs. You got no communication otherwise. 

Hospitals ask you to turn off your phone and you're too scared to turn yours back. What if you do it, in here, and it affects something? What if you do it outside and he dies behind you, struggling, weak, on the goddamn hospital bed. What then, huh?

There just isn't time. A coma can set you back in your body. It saps you, ages you as you lie there, or wait there, just beside. It takes away all those hours of training you did, all the time you spent punching the clock as you ran from one place to the other. Not necessarily in a gym, either. It takes away your car. It sets you back in your bank balance through ticket stubs. It sets your health back, and that's funny in a hospital, but you can't sustain yourself on chips and drinks from the vending machine, and you aren't always going to have a friend who'll take pity on you and bring some proper food in. You got nothing. You can't set yourself up a deli in here, it's a hospital. So, you starve. That's all there is.

It ain't just physical, neither. Comas are mental things, set up solely to block away your mind, hide in some crevice in your body and hope that one day, you might come back from it. Well, I haven't got much hope, but you put in all that you have, and you would put more, maybe more than you'd ever have, but for him it'd be worth it, right? Comas don't just affect _his_ mind, but yours too. Pulling you down every day with the same old story, the same existence. You don't have the chance to escape here and you don't want to, don't wanna escape for fear you'd miss him. You're a _mess._ You'll be the next patient on here, I mean it. The doctors can see it in you, too, they've seen it before, and they don't know what's going on with this guy. All they've got to see is you, and what's left of him, and both you and they know, it ain't much.

Something they never talk about these days, is that comas send you back in your love. Now, I know what you're thinking. You don't want to hear any of that mushy-luck-dressed-up-as-love crap, and you don't even want to hear the word, am I getting it? You just want to sit by the side of his bed and pretend you aren't wasting away just to see him smile again, see him sit up, maybe just catch him rolling around a little, curling over to one side so he doesn't look so _dead_ all the time. I got you. Well, where I come from, we call that love, so don't go fucking around and denying it. When some guy's in a coma and he's left someone behind, that's literal, as well. There's you, and then there's him. No way of reaching him, nor he you. Not until he wakes up. 

But until he does, until that magical moment, you're stuck, and that's what I mean. Relationships are hard, I know that, and so do you, but the relationship you have with this man? It's crazy. Now I know you won't move from this spot, but can you see what I mean when I say he's slipping from you? How he might be living moments, weeks maybe, years, in his head that you can't see. And you're here, living bad moments, mechanical moments, out in the living, where he can't see? You're growing away from each other, you just can't feel it. You're trying to pretend that you aren't and that he's right here with you, but he's not. He's not here anymore than I'm standing before you now, son.

So what are you going to do? Sit it out? Wait it out? I'll give you a chance. Boy, you've got hundreds of chances. Maybe even a thousand. But him? Barely one. You gonna sit here wasting your life on the hope that he'll come back? That one day you'll open your eyes from one of those naps you hate taking - and I know the ones - to see him standing there? Maybe even talking? You gonna go to him and tell him all the words you've been racking your brains for, shooting yourself for not telling him when he was still here to hear it? 

...

Are you going to wait? It's not the choice I'd pick, but he's _your_ partner. I guess I can't make the decisions for you, being an adult and all. Maybe he'll come back, and if he does, he'll need to come back soon, but son? Maybe he'll only come back in one of them dreams of yours. Maybe, when the day comes, he won't be there anymore. Maybe he left here long ago.


End file.
